to not understand what Sue Perkins is referring to?

[avrilpoissons]

"I see Britain’s third best eugenicist has been using the crayons again...."

WTF is she on about? It's obviously something super intelligent but it's beyond me.

As for the notion that this Conservative government is not putting a price on lives and has suddenly become Communist, that seems somewhat far fetched to me. If Donald Trump has now changed his tune and instead of saying it’s a storm in a teacup is now blaming the UK for not doing enough quickly enough, we know the economic analysis says going back to “normalcy” now might be a bad idea!

In order to be able to "put a price on life" we would have to work out how many lives would be saved by any particular measure. Because covid-19 is a new virus, we only have a vague idea of how deadly it is, so it is not possible to accurately calculate how much each life is "costing" us.

The flu is not the only other respiratory viral infection in existence, MarginalGain, so I still don’t see the point in harking on about it when dealing with a new infection that has a closer genetic relationship to MERS and SARS 1 than influenza, anyway?

I would have thought it was obvious, but - the point I was making was not about the genetic structure but the fatality rate which makes SARS and MERS a terrible comparison.

Why suggest basing decisions on when to return to normalcy by comparing respective death rates of a virus you know a lot about with a virus you know very little about and therefore have no accurate concept of actual death rates and long-term health harms for at the moment, in any event? How does that help anyone return to “normalcy”? Wouldn’t it be better to know and understand more, first? Which means we are stuck in the current situation for the time being however much we hate it.

Are you suggesting we wait until we understand the long-term health implications of corona before our return to normalcy? . You do realise that's impossible?

The WHO has ventured a fatality rate of something in the range of 3%, which everyone agrees is going to be inflated - try to find someone who says otherwise. The only disagreement is whether it's going to be slightly or moderately or wildly inflated, but the evidence is stacking up rapidly in favour of 'wildly'.

Who has claimed the death rate is likely to be higher than 3% though, MarginalGain? Are you suggesting current modelling being used around the world and on which the UK Government reaction is founded, is based on a fatality rate that is higher than that? It was my understanding that modelling is based on a far lower fatality rate averaged out over all age groups of less than 1%? This is still a rate at which it is predicted our healthcare systems will be overwhelmed given the rate of spread around the world. And going on about the flu doesn’t help with the modelling, so far as I am aware, so why you persist in comparing the two, I still fail to understand. My mention of SARS 1 and MERS was self-evidently not suggesting they should be used as comparisons instead - just pointing out that comparisons with other viruses are not helpful in ascertaining the fatality rate of this one, particularly when your comparison is with a genetically unrelated virus. Just look at the data we have on this virus, please, and stop talking about the flu.

The WHO has ventured a fatality rate of something in the range of 3%

Are you talking about the fatality rate of those who catch it?

We don't know how many people have had the disease and have died - because we don't know how may people have had the disease.

Is this a bad time to say no more people are dying than normally, from anything. It's about the same.

Devlesko - is this a good time to say more people all at the same time seem to be needing help breathing prior to death than usual? And that there are definitely more people dying of (not just with) coronavirus than usual? And that if your relative with diabetes or high blood pressure dies of covid 19, you wouldn’t feel inclined to shrug your shoulders and say, well, they had an underlying health condition?...

And that if an otherwise healthy relative of yours died because they needed help breathing and the hospitals had run out of the resources needed to help, you’d be pissed off at the waste of a life that in normal times would likely have been saved?

And that, eg, cancelling screening programmes so that labs can be used to test for coronavirus, and not treating other conditions in a timely fashion because of resources being used up for coronavirus patients, could also lead to more deaths? After all this we’ll need statistics for: died with coronavirus; died of coronavirus; and died of something else because of coronavirus!

And that if an otherwise healthy relative of yours died because they needed help breathing and the hospitals had run out of the resources needed to help, you’d be pissed off at the waste of a life that in normal times would likely have been saved?

Normal times? It's already the case that people die in the UK because of finite resources, it's true on every single country on the planet. It's sad but normal. NHS policy accepts this, explicity and implicitly.

I'm not aware of anyone dying from coronavirus because of ventilator scarcity in the UK, though.

MarginaGain - yet... Or do you think the government trying to get more ventilators etc is an overreaction?

You’d be a perfect person to volunteer on the front line, MarginalGain, as you find this virus much less scary than most doctors and nurses dealing with it seem to do.

You've avoided my point entirely, but that's fine. I think it's almost certainly an overreaction, yes, but I'm not a member of the NICE committee within the NHS that makes very difficult decisions about who gets what every year so I couldn't say.

I think they already put a value of about £20k/year per human life so we'd need to know what the funding would go to otherwise in order to make a judgement.

I think he's missing the point that if the virus overwhelms our health services ( which it would if we were not on lockdown)then a septic thorn from a rose in his garden may kill him. It won't even need to be CV! Here's hoping!

You’d be a perfect person to volunteer on the front line, MarginalGain, as you find this virus much less scary than most doctors and nurses dealing with it seem to do.

Well, I'm a confirmed NHS volunteer - I'm 'available' on the GoodSam app. Not much more I can do, is there.

By the way the doctors and nurses are quite right to be nervous because of the way that viral loading works - I've never said otherwise.

but 250,000 people in the UK died from flu
@Devlesko where does it say this

Walkaround, were you aware that healthcare is already 'rationed' in the way we've been continuously warned about as it relates to Coronavirus, and if so, how do you feel about it?

MarginalGain - yes, people die every die because of finite resources. Their deaths are more various and spread out, though. Lots of people falling ill and dying at the same time of the same thing, on the other hand, is not generally considered socially acceptable and something people should just shrug off and accept, even in poor countries!

MarginalGain - yes, I’m aware healthcare is already rationed re coronavirus, along with PPE and testing. I’m aware the whole thing is a shit show from start to finish.

I'm also aware covid19 has found its way into the slums in the world’s poorest countries - so we can use them as an experiment on uncontrolled transmission now, can’t we?

Walkaround, this is all just rhetoric.

MarginalGain - and you think your rhetoric should trump mine?...

My arguments are not rhetorical.

Yeah, right..l